PCGS CoinFacts® (www.PCGSCoinFacts.com), the Internet’s most comprehensive, one-stop source for historical U.S. numismatic information, launches today. The new site – ideal for both novices and advanced collectors – has been completely revamped with thousands of updates to its database and images files and a number of important new features.

PCGS Founder David Hall sums up the significance of the release: “The new PCGS CoinFacts is a 25-year dream come true. Ron Guth has been working on many aspects of PCGS CoinFacts for 15 years and I have personally worked on many parts of the new PCGS CoinFacts for at least that long. We have had a dedicated team at PCGS working on the PCGS CoinFacts launch for the last 12 months. But Coin Facts is much more than the work of the PCGS team, as we have had the help of many of the numismatic community’s top experts.”

CoinFacts President Ron Guth explained the PCGS CoinFacts extraordinary content, “CoinFacts now offers the most extensive repository of information about United States coins anywhere on the Internet. It’s a multi-functional combination of numismatic encyclopedia, historical price guide and reference resources,” said Ron Guth, President of CoinFacts, a division of Collectors Universe, Inc. (NASADQ: CLCT).

Along with dedicated pages for nearly 30,000 U.S. coins, CoinFacts members will have access to the PCGS Population Report, auction prices realized and an expanded price guide – three unique and indispensable tools for determining coin values – free with their membership. In addition to providing basic listings and mintage figures about coin types, users will find an expanded price guide for all coins in all grades; prices realized from all major auctions; survival and rarity estimates for all coins; a condition census for all coins; and relative rarity comparisons for all coins. Coins covered by PCGS CoinFacts content include all regular issue, proof, and commemorative United States Mint coins, and all Colonials, Patterns, and Territorial issues.

“This site will be a tremendous help for the identification and valuation of coins as well as for finding historical information. It will be a tremendous tool for anyone who wants to buy or sell coins,” Guth added. (more…)

The ACCG has launched phase two of a coordinated plan to challenge import restrictions on ancient coins.

As a British Airways jetliner touched down in Baltimore on April 15th , many U.S. citizens were busy writing last minute checks to the IRS. In the face of mounting global crises, they could hardly have anticipated that some of their tax dollars would be used by the U.S. State Department (DOS) to wage an ideological war against coin collectors.

Part of the cargo of BA 229/16 that day was a small packet of 23 very common, inexpensive, Cypriot and Chinese coins being imported by a collector advocacy group, the Ancient Coin Collectors Guild (ACCG). The entry of these coins, forbidden by DOS under bilateral agreements with Cyprus and China, marked the launch of a test case to determine whether the State Department has banned their importation properly under a 1983 law dealing with the protection of cultural property.

As mandated, U.S. Customs detained these coins being imported from the United Kingdom. The ACCG now plans to use this detention as a vehicle to strike down the unprecedented regulations banning importation of whole classes of ancient coins, The collectors’ group claims that, among other abnormalities, the decision process for these agreements was orchestrated contrary to the spirit and intent of governing law. Moreover, they claim that the State Department misled Congress and the public about its decision not to follow the recommendations of its own Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC) — a group of experts charged with advising the president on how best to balance the goals of protecting cultural heritage against the needs of a legitimate trade in cultural artifacts. (more…)

By Doug Winter – RareGoldCoins.com

If I had to list my favorite United States gold coins, the 1845-O quarter eagle would be at the top of the list. This is an issue that I like for a variety of reasons. It’s rare, it’s enigmatic and it has an interesting numismatic background.

After striking a comparatively large number of quarter eagles in 1843, the New Orleans mint did not produce any in 1844. None were actually struck in the calendar year of 1845 either; all 4,000 dated 1845-O quarter eagles are known to have been delivered on January 22, 1846. This meant that there was no official record of the 1845-O quarter eagle in the Mint Director’s Annual Report. As a result, this issue was all but unknown to numismatists until the beginning of the 20th century.

The first public record of the 1845-O was in the December 1894 issue of The Numismatist and in 1909, the famous uber-collector Virgil Brand purchased an 1845-O quarter from J.C. Mitchelson for the then-astounding price of $150 (this very coin is traceable today and it is the finest known; see the Condition Census listing below for more information).

Of the 4,000 struck, it is believed that just 65-75 are known. Most are very well worn and the typical 1845-O grades in the VF to EF range. Properly graded About Uncirculated pieces are very rare with fewer than a dozen known to me. I am aware of just three known in Uncirculated. These are as follows: (more…)